Columbia Heights - 10 posts

The sign for Gala Theatre illuminated on 14th Street at night. / Photo provided by GalaTheatre.

At the age of 12, Chris Sánchez didn’t speak a word of Spanish.

He also didn’t have a relationship with his own Latino heritage, according to his theater teachers.

All this changed when Chris Sánchez got involved with the Gala Hispanic Theatre in Washington, D.C. What started as a casual interest grew into a full-blown passion, thanks to the theater’s Paso Nuevo Youth Program.

Now, at the age of 19, Sánchez has become an accomplished playwright, actor, stagehand and engineer. This year, he went with his peers to the White House to receive an award from Michelle Obama on behalf of the program that launched his creative career.

“Once I got involved with Paso Nuevo, I fell in love with theater,” Sánchez said.

The program, which provides low-income and at-risk Latino youth a space to delve into the performing arts, is one of the many ways that the Gala Theatre keeps culture alive in the District.

In 1892, an electric streetcar began its ascent northwest into what would be known as Columbia Heights. Soon, the easy transportation made for a bustling community, and one of the most desired areas in the District was born in the early 1900s.

Similarly, around 1903, a streetcar began to run up and down Mt. Pleasant Street. Both Columbia Heights and the neighboring Mt. Pleasant community were home to wealthy Washingtonians, and Mt. Pleasant was desirable for its large apartment buildings.

The area would soon become known for its working-class residents and its multicultural community of immigrants from all over the world, particularly Latin America. Today, it’s a community in flux, as demographics and the face of the community changes with new development and business.

826DC opened a tutoring center and museum in Columbia Heights, because the organization saw a need in the culturally diverse community for its programs, particularly for the growing numbers of youth who do not speak English as a first language, said Mike Scalise, programs manager.

826DC is full of energy like DC USA, the shopping complex located across the street. Students, volunteers, staff and museum goers bustle throughout the center. Students share their story ideas with volunteers, while the shopkeeper informs residents of the Museum of Unnatural History. 826DC fits in the Columbia Heights neighborhood, because the organization tries to work with communities that are of higher need, said Joe Callahan, deputy director.

The nonprofit organization, dedicated to supporting students ages 6 through 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, as well as provides drop-in tutoring, after-school workshops and in-school tutoring.

The neighborhood “has a large Hispanic community and Latino population, so it was kind of a right fit for us,” he said.

Although African-Americans account for majority of the population of Columbia Heights, the neighborhood is known for its growing Latino presence. Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau show that African-Americans make up almost 60 percent of the neighborhood’s population, while Hispanics account for almost 35 percent. And almost 35 percent of the population is foreign-born.

“It was always Columbia Heights for us,” Scalise said. “There are so many schools – middle schools, high schools, charter schools, public schools – in the immediate area that it just seemed a natural fit.”

Andrew Wiseman, who runs the the New Columbia Heights blog that provides local community news and information about the neighborhood, said 826DC has provided a needed service.

“There are many people in the neighborhood for whom English isn’t their first language, so I think this is definitely useful,” Wiseman said in an e-mail interview.

Callahan said the neighborhood is “very different” from what it was 10 years ago, and in 10 years it will be “totally different.”

The 1999 opening of the Columbia Heights Metro station prompted the return of economic development and residents, who vacated the neighborhood after the 1968 riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

More than 10 years since the Metro station opened, the access to public transportation still attracts new businesses, organizations and residents to the neighborhood.The proximity to the Metro station and Metrobus stops is one reason that 826DC chose the Columbia Heights neighborhood, Callahan said.

Scalise said many of the organization’s volunteers have professional experience in the arts and editorial work, and they’re looking for a way to contribute.

“This is sort of a nice central area for that,” he said.

Wiseman said a lot of young, well-educated people have moved into the area.

“I think the excitement about 826DC reflects that,” he said.

Wiseman said these residents are interested in the center because of its connection with Dave Eggers, author and co-founder of the organization, as well as the “quirky, clever aspect” of the Museum of Unnatural History, the storefront of 826DC.

“I hope it says that newer residents are interested in volunteering to help local kids,” he said.
The after-school tutoring sessions, in which students receive free one-on-one tutoring in all subject areas, run Monday through Thursday afternoons at the center, on 3233 14th St. N.W.

“Our idea with the after-school tutoring program is that we wanted to provide a safe place for the students to learn in whatever subject they wanted to,” Scalise said. “But we also wanted to provide a reliable place for parents who maybe have schedules that don’t match up well with their kids’ school schedules.”

He said the program has worked out well, allowing many parents to drop their children off at the center while they go home to cook dinner. The students can do something productive with that time between school and dinner, he said.

Callahan said, “When they leave here, they have their homework done, and they can be focused on spending time with their family. … That’s what we do. That’s our goal.”

The Museum of Unnatural HistoryThe Museum of Unnatural History is the storefront of 826DC. The museum displays quirky items – playful parodies of typical museum exhibits – designed by volunteers and staffers. Most of the items showcased are for sale.

Some of the unique items on the shelves include: primordial soup, sabertooth dental floss, “missing links” in a jar and a roll of toilet paper labeled “Field Journal.” The store also sells T-shirts and posters.

“I love the ‘owlephant,’ ” Fixler said. “Because he’s hysterical and great.” The “owlephant” is a snowy owl with an elephant trunk.

“It’s really fun when people, especially adults, come in, and they’re really skeptical,” said Josh Fixler, shop volunteer. “And then it starts to dawn on them that it’s a joke, and then it dawns on them what we’re actually doing here.”

All proceeds from the store are used to support the organization’s writing programs.

“The excitement that they get from that realization is really great,” he said.

Fixler said he first discovered the organization through 826NYC in Brooklyn, N.Y. He said he got excited about it, bought a poster and said, “If you guys ever come to D.C., then I’m totally going to volunteer there.” Keeping his promise, Fixler volunteers in the shop.

826 National was co-founded by Eggers and educator Ninive Calegari. 826DC is one of eight affiliates, which are shaped around Calegari’s experiences as a teacher.

The other chapters are located in culturally diverse neighborhoods across the country, such as Valencia, in the heart of San Francisco, Calif., the West Town community in Chicago, the Greenwood neighborhood in Seattle, Roxbury’s Egleston Square in Boston, Ann Arbor, Mich., Brooklyn and Los Angeles.

The first center was founded in 2002 in the Mission District of San Francisco. 826 Valencia was named by its street location — 826 Valencia Street.

“It starts very small,” Callahan said, “but then it grows bigger to developing a generation of readers and writers.”

Riots have rocked the adjoining neighborhoods of Columbia Heights and Mt. Pleasant the 1960s and 1990s, waves of immigrants have come and gone, commercial interests have transformed the area, but its unyielding identity has never broken. And in the wake of recent change, residents believe the community will endure.

Washington, D.C.’s 14th Street sits as a permanent, stoic witness to a community changing with the steady, unwavering push of momentum.

The marble monuments, wide concrete sidewalks and business suits just off the inner Beltway slowly give way to something that feels more like a home, an unmistakable place with a complicated history. Take the road far enough northwest and there sits a brightly colored sketch, a city planner’s mental notebook filled in with watercolor brush strokes and Avatar, three-dimensional people, smiles and laughter amidst the unmistakable indicators of consumerism. Target and IHOP, Starbucks and Potbelly, sit alongside trendy local bars with inviting dark hues. The sidewalks, reflecting the glow of streetlights, appear to be wrapped in mustard-colored cellophane.

The sign on the Metro stop says Columbia Heights. But if you’d blinked, been away for a few years, missed momentum’s steady push forward, the Metro’s green and yellow stripes would have faded against a background now surrounded with what some call Progress and others call Gentrification. It would look alien, exciting; the empty lot that used to be there now crawling with lines of people like ants with shopping bags, emblazoned insignias announcing a purchase.

A left turn down Park or Monroe reveals a different kind of change. On a recent cold day, Mt. Pleasant Street is a community frozen in time. The 1980s, and earlier times, still linger in Mt. Pleasant, like snapshots when Salvadorians fled their war-torn country and found one of the District’s first suburbs. They had little knowledge that not far away was where blacks had rioted for their rights and the whites had fled thereafter. All they knew were promises of hope, beginnings, opportunity – and perhaps low rents and familiar faces of fellow immigrants and refugees. America’s cities offered it, they were told, and many immigrants’ first words of English were “Washington, D.C,” not knowing where that was. But the capital is the same in both languages, and the word offers hope if not certainty.

If these two neighborhoods share a common thread, it may be that they were both the sites of riots, more than 20 years apart, that have come to define the city’s racial divides. From 1968’s black riots in the wake of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. to 1991’s Latino uprising, the neighborhoods were profoundly affected, and the events still define residents’ perceptions of the past, present and future of these communities.

Today, Mt. Pleasant Street hums, as it always did. Once known for the electric streetcar that ran up and down in the early 1900s, now FedEx trucks, bulldozers and semi trucks provide the neighborhood’s sonorous backdrop of small business and Latino tiendas. There’s a line scurrying into Pollo Sabroso, where orders are called out in English and Spanish. The advertisers know the area — there’s little English here, and McDonald’s encourages those huddling under the bus bubble, catching the H8 or the 42, to try something “nuevo.” Hands are shoved into pockets, zones of warmth and comfort, while downcast eyes try not to acknowledge an unyielding cold.

In parts, the two neighborhoods — Columbia Heights and Mount Pleasant — are separated by less than a block. Fall in one, and land in the other. But momentum’s fingerprints are ever-present in Columbia Heights, while history’s newest chapter in Mt. Pleasant still seems unwritten in what historians once called “Little U.N.” As those who live in and around Columbia Heights’ three-year-old Target will attest, physical change leads, inevitably, to a difference in heart or soul. And this place has Latinos at its heart.

How Latinos ebb and evolve, so does the face and soul of the community. While residents know it, can feel the uncertainty, there’s also an air of pervasive hope.

As a whole, this community voted last September for what had already occurred, this new kind of change — development, business, newcomers. Even amid the worries — Mayor Adrian Fenty had become synonymous with the new development, and 60 percent in Ward 1, the Columbia Heights area, wanted him back when they voted in the primary. He would go on to lose to challenger Vincent Gray, who, fairly or unfairly, was branded as the “minorities’ candidate,” someone who would stand up for blacks and the disenfranchised in the face of long sought-after change.

Better schools and renovated buildings, a shopping mall and a distinct police presence are credited to Fenty in Columbia Heights. Still, there were worries citywide that a Fenty agenda meant what was once known as “Chocolate City” meant less for those who have less. The white people that had once moved to the city’s suburbs were moving back in toward the core, and the blacks that had been there for what seemed like forever were passing them by on I-495.

Olivia Cadaval and Dave Bosserman have been living in Mount Pleasant since the 1980s. The couple remembers when the first Salvadorans started to arrive in droves, bringing color and music and a need to be outside, with each other. There was also, they said, a feeling of impermanence — when the Civil War was over in El Salvador, would those who had fled leave Washington, and how would the city change?

Change is endemic, the couple said. Immigrants have always come in waves. Embassies and cultural institutes brought immigrants from Mexico and Ecuador, among others. But then there were also the Ethiopians, Vietnamese, Laotians, Iranians and Iraqis.

“Anywhere we have a war,” Bosserman said.

People always talked to each other in Mt. Pleasant, the couple said. Even just a few years ago, there were open gardens, no fences to unlock or gates to raise. One neighbors’ flowers flowed into the others. Now there are fences— the beginning of separation, of division. Still, it remains an activist community, where many are involved in community affairs and with each other. Statehood Green placards dot Cadaval and Bosserman’s home. The bathroom is filled with mementos of a lifetime spent fighting in the streets for various causes.

Residents in the area say nearly everyone is involved with their neighbors. Katharine Ferguson, an aid to Colorado Sen. Michael Bennett, said she likes the neighborhood because of that sense of inclusiveness.

“There’s kind of a deeper sense of connection and community and loyalty in the neighborhood,” said Ferguson, who has lived in the Mt. Pleasant/Columbia Heights area, in different spots, for five years. “I can only imagine in any neighborhood just north of Howard University that has historically been very true. … I get a deeper sense of people there in part because of the deeper sense of community that remains intact.”

For many, it’s “white flight” in reverse, and it’s happening around cities across America, from San Francisco to Atlanta. Those who have lived on the outskirts in the last few decades are moving back. For Mt. Pleasant and Columbia Heights, that change affects the Latino community most, though its residents are often silent in the public sphere. The future seems murky. Latinos are still very much present at CentroNia, a Latino education and advocacy center, and the Latin American Youth Center, among other seemingly ubiquitous groups and agencies. The pews at the churches are still packed — many still attend from Langley, Md., and other suburbs. Identity is shifting along with place.

Quique Aviles, who grew up in the Columbia Heights area after moving from El Salvador, points out that Columbia Height’s vast network of social services agencies and well-meaning organizations have been unable to produce a Latino leader, someone who stands up at City Council meetings or, better yet, is elected to speak for the Latino community. Maryland has Latino leaders, he said, why not D.C.? His brother, Pedro Aviles, is a prominent Latino leader in the community and said he doesn’t know why there are no elected Latinos in D.C. despite a decades-long push.

Pedro is the diplomat — a long-time activist and organizer, who now works as a consultant to other non-profits. Quique is the rebel, a poet, writer, performer, and activist. Take their answers to what they remember from what has become known as the 1991 Mt. Pleasant riots, a turning point for the city’s Latino community. The basics they remember well: A Salvadoran man was shot by a black police officer while police said he was drinking at a bus stop. Latinos had been celebrating Cinco de Mayo in nearby Adams Morgan when they heard the news — and many began rioting that would last three days.

A May 7 Washington Post story described the scene in Columbia Heights: “Breaking into a Safeway store on Columbia Road, youths carted off an automatic cash-dispensing machine, while others grabbed food, liquor, clothes, money and other items from numerous stores. Police radio frequencies crackled with countless reports of fires, lootings, crowds gathered on corners and sporadic reports of gunfire.”

There was a sense, residents said, that Latinos had been ignored too long, that a black D.C. government had willfully mistreated them and that this was a chance to fight back. Bosserman points out that because many had come from war zones, they had skills such as how to make a Molotov cocktail.

There was another element as well. As youths, not just Latinos, rioted, it got out of hand.

That’s exactly what Quique Aviles remembers. Quique, then in his early 20s, is brutally honest about his intentions. He said the first night of the riots he was too high — smoking crack and dope at his apartment — to participate. The second night, he was hanging out at the Latin American Youth Center and noticed all of his friends had new clothes.

“Deep down inside everybody wanted to throw rocks,” Aviles said. He said even though there had been significant tension between Latinos and blacks, they all saw it as an opportunity both to steal new clothes and send a message.

“Man, you went to 14th street, and blacks and Latinos were helping each other like crazy, passing each other bricks,” he said. “People said enough is enough and there was this window where you could … actually fight the system literally, with rocks and sticks and bricks. And people went.”

Some called the riots more of a disturbance, something inflated by the media. But regardless of the intent of the violence, the media and Latino leaders — like Quique’s brother, Pedro — used the event to talk about the state of the Latino community. Pedro Aviles remembers the “Latino blueprint” that emerged, as he became a central community leader and spokesman for Latino rights. The blueprint spoke of services needed and inequalities that should be addressed.

There was also a sense, ever so tentative, Cadaval said, that even illegal Latinos should have rights, too.

Cadaval, who works as a researcher and historian on Latin American issues at the Smithsonian Institute, and others say they’re not sure what the fallout from the Mt. Pleasant riots actually produced, even though it felt seminal, monumental, important. At worst, she says, a bunch of Latinos got themselves jobs in D.C. government or as leaders of various advocacy groups. Bosserman bristles, saying that he wanted to get public bathrooms installed. Instead, he said, they repaved the whole neighborhood in bricks.

“We wanted bathrooms and we got bricks,” he says, shaking his head and chuckling.

No one knows exactly what the future holds for the area’s Latinos. Pedro Aviles is thinking of making a documentary to look at 20 years after the Mt. Pleasant riots, and he isn’t sure what kind of progress or lack thereof he will find.

E. Gail Anderson Holness, a local politician and church pastor, believes, ultimately, in the strength of the community. She said she’s hopeful.

“We can set aside our racial differences … and know that we’re an inclusive people,” said Holness, the Area Neighborhood Commission chairwoman for Ward 1. “It is our color that makes the differences … and I wish that we would not see the color in each other, but see the soul in our people.”

As word spread of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, riots in the District blanketed the city in smoke and devastated the inner-city economy, businesses and property values.

The Columbia Heights neighborhood was badly burned. More than four decades later, this historic area is just beginning to recover.

What Columbia Heights does have, according to Ana Negoescu, a policy specialist at the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), is a thriving immigrant and Latino population. The rich history and affordable housing created a neighborhood with genuine diversity and character.

But things are have changed. A new Metro stop, opened in 1999, sparked rapid development and soaring real estate prices. Some existing residents say the influx of upper- and middle-class residents moving into the neighborhood do help the local economy but also make it also nearly impossible for poorer residents to stay.

The face of the neighborhood is quickly changing. Lower-income Latinos and families are beginning to realize that the future of Columbia Heights may not include them.

“People do want to stay but sometimes they just can’t take it anymore,” said Negoescu. “And that’s why a lot of families are moving out of the city to the suburbs, where they can afford to live in better conditions.”

Following the 1991 Mt. Pleasant disturbances, the D.C. Latino Civil Rights Task Force identified the lack of available, quality housing as one of the key problems that fueled the riots. Two decades later, community leaders across Columbia Heights recognize that affordable housing is still one of the most serious and overarching threats to the Latino community.

Community leaders and neighborhood advocacy organizations, such as CARECEN, are working together to promote the development of the D.C. immigrant and Latino community via advocacy and community housing initiatives.

Negoescu said that the main goal of the CARECEN housing program is to improve living conditions, access and affordability between low-income Latino and immigrant families.

Organizing tenant associations and engaging in housing education and advocacy are a few of the programs CARECEN provides on behalf of the ever-changing Columbia Heights Latino community.

Community Development
Jim Graham, Ward 1 Councilmember, sees economic development as a piece of the solution in Columbia Heights but recognizes the continued need to improve the unacceptable poverty, unemployment and high school dropout rates, especially among the Latino and ethnic populations.

According to a 2009 press release, Graham said, “The lives of thousands of long time D.C. residents have been enriched by the vast economic development in Columbia Heights over the last 11 years. These improvements also have attracted thousands of new residents. It took the city nearly four decades since the 1968 riots to reinvest in this once vibrant community. We have seen great progress since 2000.”

While many residents do benefit from Columbia Height’s economic development and improvements, not everyone has seen or experienced such positive results.

Natalie Smith, an intern at CARECEN and American University student, said, “I just finished a project this past week where I had to follow up with residents CARECEN had helped to see if they were having any luck finding a job. I must have called over a hundred people… only four had found work.”

Negoescu, the policy specialist, said, “CARACEN knew since the beginning of the housing program that it’s almost impossible to avoid development but that it has to be done with our community’s needs in mind.”

Hope for the future
“I see immigration reform as a top priority,” Negoescu said. “Every year’s a rollercoaster, there’s hope and then there’s disappointment, then there’s hope and disappointment on this issue. It becomes frustrating at some point but I really hope that in the near future it [immigration reform] is going to happen.

The struggle in Columbia Heights is far from over, with the most difficult fights still to come. To create a neighborhood that balances affordable housing and development, advocacy groups say a strong organized community must be able to help control its future.

“I hope that these attacks against immigrant communities are going to stop,” Negoescu said. “Because at least here [Columbia Heights] it has been really tough. There’s this anti-immigrant sentiment growing around the country with no real reason. And it’s really unfortunate to see how it is destroying entire communities.”

Gentrification hit the Columbia Heights neighborhood harder than any other in Washington, D.C. Most media coverage has focused on how and if the area’s Mom and Pop businesses will survive the onslaught of big retail, or how longtime residents of Columbia Heights will be able to handle the housing price spike associated with increased property values.

But how does the two-year-old DC USA shopping center’s presence affect the often-overlooked homeless population and the area’s street vendors?

George Kemp has sold flashy toys at various Metro stops along the Green Line for years, but didn’t spend nearly as much time at the Columbia Heights stop as he does now. Kemp said he makes about $50 a night during rush hour at the Columbia Heights stop, and having many people around certainly doesn’t hurt his sales.

“I got a job, I work down in Boiling [Air Force Base], and normally what I do is, I get off at 12, get about three hours, four hours sleep and then catch the rush hour,” Kemp said. “I only stay out for a couple hours. You don’t need but a couple hours.”

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority confirmed that since the DC USA shopping opened, foot traffic in and out of the Columbia Heights Metro station is up.

WMATA spokesperson Taryn McNeil said the average number of passengers boarding at the Columbia Heights station on weekdays rose from 8,441 in 2007 to 11,375 in 2009. DC USA’s biggest shopping attraction, the Target store, opened its doors to customers in spring 2008.

Kemp loves selling stuff. Before he switched to selling flashy toys, he used to sell maps to tourists by the Smithsonian and the other attractions downtown. But, now, though, he said he makes a killing off selling toys to kids and families.

“It’s a lot easier,” Kemp said. “Maps, you got to ask people for donations, five or ten dollars.”

Other vendors jockey for position on the sidewalk. One man sells winter gloves out of a plastic bag, jogging up and down the street in front of the Metro stop and DC USA shopping center entrance courting customers. He yells, “Gloves for a dollar!” People stop to buy them, since it’s fairly cold outside in early December in Washington.

Another vendor lays claim to a city bench outside the DC USA’s Radio Shack, selling, in addition to gloves similar to his colleague’s, wool socks, tee-shirts, winter hats and other small items. Both vendors declined requests for interviews.

A few feet away, a Spanish-speaking immigrant sells corn-on-the-cob to passersby from his rolling cart.

On the other hand, Lamont Caldwell a homeless man who has lived around Columbia Heights for more than 18 years, the extra pedestrian traffic means more chances to try to get help. Caldwell said there are a few folks who live in the newly renovated neighborhood who help him out quite a bit, and he wouldn’t survive without them.

“They’re very nice people,” Caldwell said. “Some of them, they buy you food and stuff.”

As he’s talking, Caldwell points to a young woman undoing her bicycle lock and says, “This girl here, she’s one of the girls who gives money to me and buys food for me. Sometimes she helps me out and sometimes she can’t and I appreciate her help whenever she can.”

Caldwell said he can’t read or write, and has been homeless for most of the 18 years he’s lived in Columbia Heights. But, whether by coincidence or as a direct result of the DC USA shopping center going up, he’s going to get housing assistance soon, he said.

The Columbia Heights community, located just north of the White House in Washington, D.C., is known for having a heavy African American and Latino population. With the onset of gentrification, the population is continuously changing as whites, Africans, Asians and other ethnicities are moving into the community, while African-Americans and Latinos are moving away from the city.

To maintain the traditional socio-fabric and cultural aspects of the Columbia Heights community, there are organizations and groups working hard to stay in tune with the city’s motto: Unity in Diversity. Dipanwita Ghosh, Arunjana Das and Arliene T. Penn were able to visit this community to learn what steps are being taken not only to preserve culture, but to see in what ways a multicultural society is sustained.

Ghosh looks at how a dance studio is able to bridge diversity and bring different ethnicities to together for choreographed performances. The studio is able to incorporate different genres of dance that reflects the diversity of its participants.

Das looks at a Hispanic theatre that devotes itself to assisting immigrants in finding solace in their new community. It promotes the Spanish culture through plays and movie that chronicles the many issues affecting the Hispanic community.

Penn looks at hair braiding as a form of subtle communication between West Africans and African-Americans. Hair braiding is an artistic tool used to inform the public that Africa is not a monolith, and African-Americans are wearing the styles to show that black hair is beautiful.

These stories show a commonality in the Columbia Heights community, in that, people are exhibiting different artistic disciplines to express cultural creativity and social engagement.

We do hope that you enjoy the stories that are accompanied with different multimedia aspects including photo videos, maps and interviews.

Rioters burned down Columbia Heights 40 years ago. Today a group of artists is working hard to create a reawakening of the arts in this area.

Following Martin Luther King Junior’s assassination in 1968, angry mobs destroyed much of this northwest Washington, D.C., neighborhood. A picture on the walls of the Gala Hispanic Theatre shows that only shops owned by black people were left standing. All other buildings were burned down, or closed for business after the violence.

But today as you step out of the Metro station, you encounter a whole new story. New condos, popular restaurants, shopping centers-the area has gone through a complete makeover. But amidst the mushrooming of new and posh places, what stands out most is the new push towards rebranding the area as the art capital of the district.

Tiffany Hill, the executive director at the Dance Institute of Washington, housed in one of the tall buildings that towers over Columbia Heights. It was the third building to be constructed after the riots, after the Tivoli and the Triangle Partners buildings, which face the institute.

“The D.C. Commission on Arts and Humanities and Art Service Communications are trying to bring about a synergy between various arts programs, art organizations and charter schools to bring about a revival of the arts,” she said, sitting on the sofa in the lobby of the institute as little children in leotards made their way to their next ballet class.

Hill said that even a few years back, she and her friends considered the area unsafe because of problems related to drugs, violence, crime and homelessness.

“No one wanted to stop here, people would just drive by as fast as possible. But all that has changed now,” she added.
Today she feels comfortable and happy working in this locality, she said.

Columbia Heights has a dynamic history. It used to be a predominantly rural area initially and then in the 1800s was a horse racetrack. A large number of government workers and middle income groups lived there around the 1920s and it became a full- fledged “city within a city” by the 1960s.

Today Columbia Heights has a diverse population, with an African American majority. Latinos form the second largest group, followed by whites and then Asians. Significant differences in income levels and religious backgrounds add to the diversity.

“There are people who have lived here in this area for many decades while there are people who have recently bought the plush condos in the neighborhood. As a result we have children from poor and rich families in our classes,” Hill said.

The dance school has students who come are Latinos, Indians, African Americans, Vietnamese and white Americans, said Emy Imoh, in charge of marketing and registration.

Fabian Barnes founded this dance institute to bring together a diverse community in the pursuit of the arts, specifically dance.
While touring with the Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1970s, Barnes fell in love with D.C., he said. During those days, the mayor would organize summer youth programs, for which students were paid to take art classes. Barnes taught the dance part of that program.

Following the success of the summer program, he decided to open a dance school in the late 1980s with funding from the D.C. Art Works.

Initially, he started the school in the basement of another school which had some extra space to offer. It grew, and two years ago they relocated to the location in Columbia Heights.

The school offers dance lessons in ballet, modern, fusion, folk, jazz, hip-hop and West African styles. Community classes are offered to students who want to learn dance as a hobby. At the end of the semester, students in the community classes stage performances for friends and family. Students who are interested in dance as a career gravitate toward the more rigorous pre-professional classes.

Even though the institute offers classes for all age groups, it primarily focuses on youth.

“Our purpose is to get the young people interested and motivated in the arts,” Barnes said.

Often, young people feel a sense of disillusionment and frustration, Barnes said. Many of them feel that they have nothing positive to do with their lives and they think that there is a lack of options of constructive things to do, he added.

For them, engaging in any form of art provides an outlet.

“When you dance or sing or play an instrument you do it from your heart and your energy is put to good use and you have fun with it,” he said.

“Having an institute like this gives them an option to do something positive and constructive with their lives.”

Many of the young people in the community come from families where the parents have menial jobs and work for more than 12 hours a day, he said. During this time, after school, taking up dance can be a productive hobby that will keep them busy and they can have fun.

“Some of the kids don’t fare well in academics and are good in sports or the arts. Here they can realize their own potential and can get something to feel good about themselves,” Barnes said.

The ongoing economic crisis has been difficult for the institute. But, they have made the necessary changes, like hiring part-time teachers instead of full-time ones.

“We are trying to be responsible and still make the necessary changes to suit the situation best,” he said.

The vision for the future is to have this institute operate above capacity, Barnes said.

“We want to be able to give individual dancers and small companies the ability to live their dreams. We want to make a name for ourselves, not just nationally but internationally,” he added.

Any honest citizen should give back to his community, Barnes said.

“I am doing the same in this community and I believe dance is a great way to do that.”